


if there's nothing here (why are we still here?)

by Sia Doll (satisfactuality)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Future Fic, Ghosts, Mild Gore, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 17:01:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satisfactuality/pseuds/Sia%20Doll
Summary: the one where your soulmate’s ghost haunts you when they die and jonathan deals.





	if there's nothing here (why are we still here?)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a soulmate au prompt list on tumblr.

Fate’s pretty fucked up with the whole soulmates thing, Jonathan thinks. Because what’s the point of having soulmates if you only know once they die? It’s all he can think about when he has too much time and nothing to fill it.  Today's one of those days. He doesn't have work, there's nothing on the shitty television in his shitty apartment that he wants to watch, and all he has is to distract him is his soulmates. 

Steve’s stretched out on the bed next to him, still looking whole and unharmed today, hair perfectly fluffed and smile warm if a little condescending. It’s a Good Day, then. Nancy isn’t around right now, but he figures it’s only a matter of time. They never leave for long. Sometime he wishes they would leave for good, finally leave him alone so he can just deal with. (He tries not to do that anymore. It hurts them and he’s not selfish enough to do that to them.)

“You’re getting all mopey about the universe again,” Steve says, and Jonathan has to look away. He’s so young, because he was always reckless and put Nancy and Jonathan before himself. (They stopped using fire to take out monsters after they lost Steve. They stopped hunting altogether after they lost Steve.) Steve’s been 19 for nine years now, and Jonathan knows he’s not that old but some days he feels ancient compared to his soulmate. 

“The universe gave me two soulmates and I got two years with one and four with the other. I think I get to be mopey about it,” Jonathan replies, and immediately regrets it. He’s not looking at Steve, but he can smell the smoke and feel the extra heat that comes with Steve’s Bad Day form (he can’t think of them as their dead forms, it’s too much. Now it’s just Good Days and Bad Days.)

“We’re still here, Jonathan. We aren’t gone, and we aren’t going anywhere,” Steve says, and he sounds so upset Jonathan turns his head to look back at him. It’s always so difficult to tell if Steve’s angry or sad, or maybe both. Jonathan sometimes wonders if he would have grown out of it if he’d had the time to. (He’d asked Steve once, and Steve had just shrugged. “How would I know, I’m dead not not all-knowing. I know what you know.”) Jonathan rolls onto his side to fully face Steve, and reaches out to grab his hand, the one that’s only slightly charred and therefore less likely to burn him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it. Steve’s hand is already fading out of his grip as he calms down, and that’s the worst part of the whole soulmates thing. They’re only tangible to him when they’re in their Bad Day versions. Not that he can really touch Steve anyway, not without the risk of third degree burns. Steve was (is?) one of the most tactile people he’s ever met, and Jonathan use to complain about it all the time. He’d give anything to have it back now. 

“We know you are,” the voice comes from behind him, and there she is. Nancy looks as beautiful as ever, as she walks around the bed to curl up against Steve’s back. Those years at college were good to her, and he’s glad she got them. She’d almost graduated, too, until she showed up in his dorm room the morning after her twenty-first birthday bruised to hell and coughing up blood. After everything they’d seen, a drunk driving accident seemed like such a mundane way for Nancy Wheeler to die that he’d almost laughed. She was the only reason he'd stayed through his senior year. ("When you're in class it's almost like I am too, besides, I like learning about what you love," she'd said one day when he was about to drop out.) 

They look so normal together he can almost convince himself it’s just like that first summer they spent on the road together. He’s too old now for it to really work, and recently it just makes him feel increasingly lonely. He misses his family, and the Wheelers and the other kids (who aren’t kids anymore, he knows. They’re older than both Steve and Nancy got to be, but they’ll always just be ‘the kids’ to him). He only gets to see them if they come with when Will visits. He doesn’t go back to Hawkins anymore. There are too many Bad Days when they go back to Hawkins, and Jonathan can’t be happy when they’re like that, even around his family. 

"I'm sorry you got stuck with me," he croaks out finally. It's been a while since he's sunk this far into these thoughts. Since he's thought about what hell it must be for them to watch him live the same boring life and not be able to leave. Because maybe if they'd just been each others soulmates they could have passed on or whatever is going to happen when Jonathan finally gives up. 

"Jonathan, we aren't stuck with you. You have to know that. We love you." Nancy's cool fingers brush against his cheek and he squeezes his eyes shut against the tears that threaten to spill out. 

“And we know you still love us,” she finishes, and she isn’t wrong. It’s been seven years since he lost both of them, and he’s never loved them any less. 


End file.
